<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
                                                                                     
 h       t     t                ::       /     /                     t             / 
 h       t     t                ::      //    //                     t            // 
 h     ttttt ttttt ppppp sssss         //    //  y   y       sssss ttttt         //  
 hhhh    t     t   p   p s            //    //   y   y       s       t          //   
 h  hh   t     t   ppppp sssss       //    //    yyyyy       sssss   t         //    
 h   h   t     t   p         s  ::   /     /         y  ..       s   t    ..   /     
 h   h   t     t   p     sssss  ::   /     /     yyyyy  ..   sssss   t    ..   /     
                                                                                     
	<https://y.st./>
	Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>

	This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
	it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
	the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
	(at your option) any later version.

	This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
	but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
	MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
	GNU General Public License for more details.

	You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
	along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
-->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
	<head>
		<base href="https://y.st./en/weblog/2018/11-November/12.xhtml"/>
		<title>Government offices are closed today &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2018/11-November/12.xhtml&gt;</title>
		<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/link/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./icon.png"/>
		<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/link/main.css"/>
		<script type="text/javascript" src="/script/javascript.js"/>
		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/>
	</head>
	<body>
<nav>
	<p>
		<a href="/en/coursework/">Coursework</a> |
		<a href="/en/take-down/">Take-down requests</a> |
		<a href="/en/">Home</a> |
		<a href="/en/a/about.xhtml">About</a> |
		<a href="/en/a/contact.xhtml">Contact</a> |
		<a href="/a/canary.txt">Canary</a> |
		<a href="/en/URI_research/"><abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> research</a> |
		<a href="/en/opinion/">Opinions</a> |
		<a href="/en/law/">Law</a> |
		<a href="/en/recipe/">Recipes</a> |
		<a href="/en/a/links.xhtml">Links</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/2018/11-November/12.xhtml.asc">{this page}.asc</a>
	</p>
	<hr/>
	<p>
		Weblog index:
		<a href="/en/weblog/memories">Memories</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/"><abbr title="American Standard Code for Information Interchange">ASCII</abbr> calendars</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/index_ol_ascending.xhtml">Ascending list</a> |
		<a href="/en/weblog/index_ol_descending.xhtml">Descending list</a>
	</p>
	<hr/>
	<p>
		Jump to entry:
		<a href="/en/weblog/2015/03-March/07.xhtml">&lt;&lt;First</a>
		<a rel="prev" href="/en/weblog/2018/11-November/11.xhtml">&lt;Previous</a>
		<a rel="next" href="/en/weblog/2018/11-November/13.xhtml">Next&gt;</a>
		<a href="/en/weblog/latest.xhtml">Latest&gt;&gt;</a>
			</p>
			<hr/>
</nav>
		<header>
			<h1>Government offices are closed today</h1>
			<p>Day 01346: <time>Monday, 2018 November 12</time></p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/11/12.jpg" alt="A gate extended across the stairs" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="bicycle">
	<h2>Bicycle</h2>
	<p>
		The new bike works very well; I&apos;m impressed.
		The ride is smooth, and the brakes are so sensitive that I&apos;m having to readapt, and either wait longer to stop or ease onto the brakes instead of just using them to their full extent right away.
		It&apos;s really nice.
		The front wheel does have a slight wobble though.
		It&apos;s just enough to cause the wheel to rhythmically rub the brakes and make a slight pulsing sound.
		The brakes are also really squeaky when used.
		Neither of these issues is even worth mentioning, save to be thorough about the state of the bike.
		I think I&apos;m able to go faster on this thing too, and with greater ease than I could on the old bike, but my default speed doesn&apos;t feel any faster.
		I guess my only real problem with this bike though is that it has no shocks.
		I&apos;d gotten used to riding off curbs without bracing for impact, and I can&apos;t do that any more.
		(Why are there not ramps on all street corners?)
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I lived in a post-apocalyptic world.
		I stumbled upon another survivor, and we banded together.
		Neither of us really needed the other at first, but we both wanted the company.
		They had a habit of shooting down extra terrestrial spaceships at night, which too the form of flying saucers.
		I thought it was just a pass time, but I later learned the extra terrestrials were destroying the planet.
		They frequently fired powerful <abbr title="light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation">laser</abbr>s at the planet, and I watched as the moon blew up, probably after having been hit by one of their ships.
		I found one of their ships on the ground, but it wasn&apos;t one of their powerful, saucer-like ships.
		Instead, it seemed more like a sea jelly, but without the tentacles.
		The top was made of some sort fabric, and an open undercarriage was supported beneath.
		Having nothing to protect the inside but the fabric that peeled away, I was able to get into the thing; the pilot was missing.
		When I sat in the seat, I could will the thing to levitate, and when I did, the cloth above inflated like a jelly taking in water in preparation to propel itself.
		Oddly enough, I couldn&apos;t get it to rise beyond about three metres from the ground.
		I found another similar craft above the water, dipping down and touching the water&apos;s surface while the cloth contracted, then bobbing back up into the air while the cloth expanded, exactly to opposite of how a sea jelly would operate.
		At the hight of its ascent, it&apos;d fire a laser at something nearby and blow it up.
		I piloted my craft headlong into it, using my hands to move my cloth out of the way, then grabbed their craft, taking us both down.
		On the ground, I pulled away the cloth on the other ship, finding a surprised and angry extra terrestrial.
		It was tiny, only standing as high as my knee.
		I captured it easily enough, as it had no real defences, and brought it back to my companion.
		I told them we needed to find some sort of containment vessel for these creatures.
		Once we had one, I could put this thing down, and we could use the craft to go after more of them, hopefully capturing enough of them to stop the invasion.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="paperwork">
	<h2>Trying to get paperwork</h2>
	<p>
		I arrived at the Social Security Administration office right as they were scheduled to open.
		I didn&apos;t actually know when they opened at that point though, so due to the lack of vehicles in the parking lot, I assumed I&apos;d arrived an hour early or something.
		Nope.
		It turns out they&apos;re closed today, probably because of the holiday yesterday.
		Because as much as it makes no sense to designate some days as holidays and treat them as somehow different than other days, people think it&apos;s a great idea to close on days that aren&apos;t even holidays themselves if a holiday fell nearby, which makes even less sense.
	</p>
	<p>
		I figured I&apos;d try dropping by the courthouse.
		They&apos;d probably be closed too, but I was already in Eugene and had gotten there so early that I had plenty of time.
		As I thought, they were closed, but they also had gates blocking access to the front of the building so I couldn&apos;t check their posted hours.
		I encircled the building on foot, but their hours aren&apos;t posted anywhere else.
		And the point of posting their hours somewhere inaccessible when closed is ... what, again?
	</p>
	<p>
		I debated back and forth about trying to hit up my favourite café while I was in town.
		They might be closed, so it could be a waste of time.
		I finally concluded that it didn&apos;t matter if they were open, because I would get there too early.
		If open, they&apos;d still be serving breakfast instead of the good stuff.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="pickup">
	<h2>Picking up the old bike</h2>
	<p>
		Once back in Springfield, I dropped by the bike shop to see if they were open.
		They were.
		So I stopped by the apartment to drop off my working bicycle, so I could walk in and pick up the old bicycle.
		I checked me email and ... they still hadn&apos;t written back.
		I guess they&apos;re they type of company that&apos;ll write you via email if you ask them to in person, but if you write back to them, they won&apos;t check their email in a timely manner.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I arrived, I was told they&apos;d done nothing with the bike yet because they were waiting to hear back from me.
		I wasn&apos;t expecting them to do anything without hearing from me first.
		That&apos;d be a dishonest thing for them to do: start work without hearing from me, then charge me for it.
		I explained that I&apos;d emailed them, but never heard back from them.
		They claimed that their bike shop doesn&apos;t even use email, which caught me off guard, which is likely why I forgot to ask them about the pedal and tire replacements in the estimate.
		I explained that they&apos;d actually written to me first, and I&apos;d responded; that confused them a bit.
		I did get an answer as to replacement cost though.
		They only wanted to charge me $150 <abbr title="United States Dollars">USD</abbr> for one they said was similar to the broken one (I didn&apos;t take a look myself to see how similar).
		I was expecting a much higher price.
		I&apos;ve not actually ever bought a brand new bike, so I had no idea how much they cost; I always assumed it was much more.
	</p>
	<p>
		I explained that I couldn&apos;t afford that right now, so they offered to allow me to make payments on it.
		I clarified, asking if that&apos;d still come out to the same total price, which they confirmed, so I reiterated that I can&apos;t afford that right now.
		People seem to have this mentality that if you don&apos;t pay it as a lump sum, you can somehow afford more-expensive things.
		I&apos;ve got new for you: it doesn&apos;t work that way.
		If I could afford the payments, I could afford to save that money little by little and afford the bike in one lump sum.
		I mean, I don&apos;t even blame the representative for trying to pull that on me.
		It would have worked, on a lot of customers.
		It&apos;s the customers that buy into that kind of garbage that I&apos;m calling idiots in this situation.
	</p>
	<p>
		Once I got home, I rechecked the email they&apos;d sent me before to see if the representative I&apos;d dealt with on Saturday had emailed me from a personal email account as a courtesy to me.
		Nope.
		Not only did the email address look like it belonged to the bike shop, the email also included instructions that I email my response back.
		Some of the employees just don&apos;t know there&apos;s an email account, let alone know to check it or even know the log in credentials.
	</p>
</section>
		<hr/>
		<p>
			Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst;
			You may modify and/or redistribute this document under the terms of the <a rel="license" href="/license/gpl-3.0-standalone.xhtml"><abbr title="GNU&apos;s Not Unix">GNU</abbr> <abbr title="General Public License version Three or later">GPLv3+</abbr></a>.
			If for some reason you would prefer to modify and/or distribute this document under other free copyleft terms, please ask me via email.
			My address is in the source comments near the top of this document.
			This license also applies to embedded content such as images.
			For more information on that, see <a href="/en/a/licensing.xhtml">licensing</a>.
		</p>
		<p>
			<abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr> standards are important.
			This document conforms to the <a href="https://validator.w3.org./nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fy.st.%2Fen%2Fweblog%2F2018%2F11-November%2F12.xhtml"><abbr title="Extensible Hypertext Markup Language">XHTML</abbr> 5.2</a> specification and uses style sheets that conform to the <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org./css-validator/validator?uri=https%3A%2F%2Fy.st.%2Fen%2Fweblog%2F2018%2F11-November%2F12.xhtml"><abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr>3</a> specification.
		</p>
	</body>
</html>

